LL-L: "Etymology" LOWLANDS-L, 05.MAR.2001 (01) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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  L O W L A N D S - L * 05.MAR.2001 (01) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: Stefan Israel [stefansfeder at yahoo.com]
Subject: "Etymology"

Ron

> [..] a ring was given as a _vartecken_ of ones promise of
> faithfulness, and she went on to explain that this word
> _vartecken_ has a connection with the female
> pre-Christian deity (_gudinna_ "goddess") Var, that a
> _vartecken_ is "Var's token."
[...]
> _Var_ does not seem  to make sense, because _var_ means
> (1) 'puss', (2) 'each', 'every', and (3) 'where' in
> Modern Swedish.

I think there might have been a goddess Var "Spring (the time of
year)".  Old Norse had the word for spring _va'r_, modern
Swedish _vaar_, English _vernal_ from Latin _ver_ etc., and
there might have been a minor goddess by that name.  On the
other hand, the long vowel of _va'r_ should have yielded _aa_
[o:], and not _a_ [Q:].

Stefan

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From: Helge Tietz [helgetietz at yahoo.com]
Subject: LL-L: "Etymology" LOWLANDS-L, 04.MAR.2001 (03) [E]

I do agree that "vartecken" will much rather have a
Low saxon connection, the problem in Sweden is that
everybody gets told at school that their language is
influenced by German, but they are not aware that the
language which had the strong impact on Swedish was in
fact Low Saxon during the Hanseatic League period, so
they go and look up a standart German dictionary to
check for words which seem of odd origion to them and
neither find them there, so they look for another
explaination instead of looking up a Dutch dictionary
which probably would have given them the clue. There
is a famous tower in the old town of Tallinn in
Estonia which has the wonderful Low Saxon name "Kiek
in de Kök", spelled perfectly in Low Saxon, the same
problem exists there, the name is explained as being
of German origion but all those who have a knowldge of
German have difficulties to comprehend the sentence at
all, whereas a Dutch speaker would probably understand
it right the way. There is certainly a lack of
linguistic awareness, due to the fact that Low Saxon
has been neclected and categorized as a German dialect
for over 300 years now.

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